What, sleeping, lies in wait
by When the clock strikes twelve
Summary: A few years after the battle of Hogwarts, Harry has to clean out the attic, but why he finds is rather surprising. A short fic I wrote for a friend. She wanted me to share it, so here it is. Enjoy, if you dare.
1. Chapter 1

What, sleeping, lies in wait

"Harry, you need to clear out the attic!" Ginny told him for what felt like the hundredth day in a row, although she knew it had only been about a week.

"Why can't you do it?" her fiancé snapped back at her.

"Because, unlike you, I have a job which means I actually need to leave the house more than twice a week."

"Hey, I have to do research and independent work on this case if I want to become a level 3 auror."

"Well, while you're doing your _independent research_," Ginny said, oozing sarcasm, "you can clean out the attic." With that she grabbed the piece of toast Harry had just lovingly buttered for himself and flounced out of the room, picking up her broomstick on the way.

Harry sighed, as he buttered himself another piece of toast, daydreaming vaguely as he slowly munched it into oblivion.

It was Ginny's birthday tomorrow, so he knew that he should be nice to her and do what she wanted so that everything would be ready for her.

Reluctantly he dragged himself up a flight of stairs and a ladder until he reached the trap door that led into the attic. Pushing it open, he was greeted by a sudden attack of dust to the face which made him cough and splutter. He brought his hands to his face, which turned out to be a very bad idea, as he fell five feet to the carpeted, but still very hard floor beneath him.

He lay still for a moment, glasses askew, contemplating the small square above him; it was almost as if the universe didn't want him to clean out the attic. But he knew that an upset Ginny was a lot more threatening than anything that the measly old universe could throw at him, so he pulled himself upright and once again made his way up the ladder to what he was sure would probably be something along the lines of certain doom.

Once inside the attic, he lit an oil lamp with the tap of his wand, and orangey light permeated the room. Somehow the room was still very dusty; even though Harry was sure he had swallowed at least five pounds of the stuff so he raised his magical wooden pointy stick and muttered, "_Scurgify!_" Half a second later, the room was dust-free. Mrs Weasley would be proud, Harry thought to himself as he scoured the contents of the room around him. There wasn't actually all that much in there: several chairs, a sofa, a table, a large, elegantly-carved, oak chest of drawers, and about ten large cardboard boxes.

Harry started with the furniture. He went round sitting on all the chairs, vanishing all the ones that made a lot of noise, were very uncomfortable or collapsed beneath his weight. The table was actually nicer than the one they had downstairs in the kitchen and Harry decided that when they moved to a bigger housed it would become their dining room table. Everything, else checked out, he even found his old Marauder's Map in one of the drawers.

Four of the boxes were filled with books, which he didn't even contemplate throwing away because he knew that Hermione would never forgive him. Two were filled with old robes, and broken shoes and a cloak with a large rip around the left shoulder. Upon closer inspection, Harry realised it was the cloak Ron had worn, when they had snuck into Gringotts to steal the cup. "Ah, good times," he muttered to himself.

He put all the old clothes in a large bag which he would give to Luna; she loved second-hand things and would probably cut them all up and make some interesting ball gown out of it.

One of the boxes contained several large photo albums, including the one Hagrid had given Harry all those years ago. These, he placed next to the trap door; he would show them to Ginny and they could choose what to keep and what to throw.

The other three boxes were full of useless paraphernalia such as chipped cups, mouldy potion supplies, some gone-off owl treats and schoolbooks. Once he had disposed of these, Harry returned to the attic to do one final check.

In the far corner, he noticed something that he hadn't spotted earlier, a small wooden chest. He went over and picked, but when he tried to open it, the box remained stubbornly closed. "_Alohamora_," Harry cast, but there was no satisfying click.

Something on the box caught his eye, an engraving of a snake, lay just beneath the keyhole, without thinking about it, Harry hissed and spat at the box. The serpent seemed to smile as the box jumped open.

Inside there lay three objects: a quill, an ink bottle and a very familiar diary that Harry had one day hoped to never see again.

Unable to control his own movements he inked the quill and opening the diary to a random page he wrote one word.

_Tom._

He stared down expectantly, almost hopefully, at the blank page, and sure enough, his three letters slowly started to sink into the page. The reply did not come immediately, in fact, Harry had to wait almost a minute and a half before royal purple ink began to blossom across the page.

_Ah, Harry. Welcome back. I assume you thought you'd seen the last of me, but I will always be. Until I am forgotten, I will survive in the pages of my old diary. Now come let me see your face, it was once so familiar, but now all I can remember is a scar._

Harry could almost hear, the smooth, comforting voice of the young Tom Riddle that he had heard only a few times before. He knew it was a bad idea, but he couldn't hold back and he slowly moved his face closer to the yellowing pages in front of him until they were somehow all around him. Suddenly they were no longer pages, but smooth walls of **hard, veined** marble.

"Harry," said the all-too-familiar voice behind him, smooth as the walls around him.

Although he desperately wanted to, Harry did not whirl around, but slowly and calmly turned to face the handsome young man, with dark curly hair before him. "I thought you were dead. I killed you."

"Come now, Harry, let's not talk about past mistakes and regrettable murders. You've grown a lot since the last time I saw you."

"Where are we? How are you alive?" Harry asked.

"You always were quite slow," Tom sighed. "You see, Harry, I was such an important part of your life and you of mine, that I will always stay alive inside you. My corporeal and spiritual selves may have vanished into the ether, but I will always be right here, nice and cosy inside of you. Just like old times, eh, Harry? Although I'm, sadly, no longer the purpose for your existence. As for where we are, it was just a little something I put together when I realised that you would be coming. Do you like it?"

Harry didn't know what to say. He should be angry, afraid, confused, but the only feeling that he could identify was a kind of strange relief. Tom was right; Harry had spent so long focusing all his efforts on him, that once he'd gone, Harry had actually missed him. But he couldn't, this was the man who had killed his parents._ Actually,_ said the annoying small voice in the back of his head, _he isn't the man who had killed his parents. The man standing in front of you can't be older than 24. Voldemort didn't kill your parents until much later._

"Harry, you've been staring at me for three minutes," said Tom in a half-amused, half-bored manner.

"Sorry, just a bit of a shock to see you."

"I have always been rather good at surprising people. But it was never my intention to upset you; after all, you know that all I ever wanted was for us to join together, we would have been so powerful."

"I don't believe you," Harry said. "If I'd let down my defences, gone with you, I doubt I would have lived another day. You knew what the prophecy said: 'neither can live while the other survives.'"

"True, but these things need to be taken at arm's length. There was also something about you, even when you were a mere boy of eleven that was different. Now I realise that it was the bit of me within you that first drew me to you."

"Anyway," said Harry, starting to become a little awkward at the direction the conversation was taking, "why do you look so young, aren't you about 70 years old?"

"I don't like to talk about my age," Tom said, cheekily. "But here I am timeless, I am eternal, I can choose to look however I choose. Vanity is a sin, Harry, and unlike sloth, or gluttony, it is one that I am rather partial to and Merlin knows that I was attractive when I was young. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Err, yes I suppose so," Harry replied, blushing slightly out of awkwardness. Tom chuckled, a sound that made Harry smile slightly. "Are you real?"

In a split-second Tom was inches from Harry, hand raised. "I can touch you, if that's what you mean," he whispered, pressing a long pale finger to the scar on Harry's forehead. The bespectacled man braced himself expecting a flood of pain, but instead, an amazing flood of warmth flowed through him. It was as though he had been cold for years and now someone was putting him in a warm bath that soothed his aching muscles.

Tom took his finger away and Harry realised that he'd closed his eyes. He still felt warm on the inside and when he opened his eyes, Tom's face was still mere inches from his own. Harry could see the faint flicker of a smile in his hard grey eyes as Tom spoke, "Another surprise?"

"Well, you are very good at them," Harry answered.

"I would say it's my third greatest skill."

"What are the first two?"

"Cold-blooded murder is second," Tom said, and Harry took a nervous step back, moving his hand to his wand. "But my finest skill," Tom took a step forward, "is persuasion."

He placed one hand on Harry's wand and the other on his cheek. Grey eyes met emerald ones.

Dot, dot, dot.


	2. Chapter 2

What, sleeping, lies in wait

It wasn't long before Tom had Harry pressed against the cold, hard wall locked in a passionate embrace. Harry suddenly realised that he wasn't actually on the ground anymore – Tom was clearly a lot stronger than he looked – and so he flexed his feet so that his toes made contact with the stone floor again.

Harry replied eagerly to the surprisingly warm lips pressed a little too firmly to his own. He opened his mouth to let Tom inside and arched his neck contentedly into the long hand that was cupped around it.

It took a few seconds for Harry to realise what he was actually doing. He pushed Tom away from him with surprising difficulty; he really was very strong. "I'm sorry, Tom. I can't, you're Voldemort, you killed my parents and my friends. I don't even know what I'm doing here." Harry walked a few steps so that he was no longer facing the beautiful nightmare behind him.

"Harry," Tom said calmly, "I am not Voldemort… yet. In any case, I'm not even a memory here," he finished sadly.

"What are you, then?" Harry asked, still facing away from him, but turning his head slightly, so that he could almost see Tom's figure in the corner of his eye.

"I'm a vestige; I'm the little baby under the bench."

Harry remembered with startling clarity, the creature that had been bawling its eyes out in King's Cross, when Voldemort had killed him – the same Voldemort that he had just been kissing. "You look a lot better than you did then."

"I try," he said, laughing, not the comforting laugh of earlier, but a sad, humourless laugh, that made Harry want to turn around and envelop the man behind him in a hug. "You know, Harry, that day – the day you killed me, the day I killed myself, I suppose – was the only day that I truly hated you. I may have disliked your stubbornness and been angered by your lack of cooperation, but I never hated you until that day. I wanted to kill you."

"You tried pretty hard. Anyway, a few minutes ago it seemed more like you wanted to fuck me."

"Don't get lippy."

"My lips are none of your concern."

"I would disagree," Tom smiled enigmatically, his cool façade returning to cover the emotions he had come far too close to revealing. "Now, I believe we were in the middle of something."

Harry knew that Tom was coming up behind him so he walked away and turned round. Tom was standing where Harry had been a few seconds before, one perfectly formed eyebrow raised questioningly. "I really can't do this, Tom. I have a fiancée; we're getting married in less than a month."

"You're not doing anything wrong Harry. I'm as much a part of you as your hand is, if you get my drift."

Harry contemplated this for a second before answering, "Still, it feels wrong. I already feel bad."

"Well then, this is goodbye." The marble walls began to turn yellow.

"I thought I controlled this place; isn't it my mind?"

"Not this bit. See you later lover-boy," Tom called as the walls became smaller and more paper-like.

"I'm not your-," Harry began, but he was back in his attic holding the little diary tightly. His thigh was wet and he looked down in alarm to discover that he had tipped the ink pot onto himself.

Having dried himself with a quick charm, Harry descended into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea, with substantial amount of something stronger. He looked out the window and saw that hardly any time had passed during his jaunt into the diary, which hadn't actually been all that long, although it felt like hours. He sighed, he supposed he should probably do some work before that evening.

Several hours and not a lot of work later Harry was preparing dinner when Ginny came home and snuck up behind him jabbing him in the sides as she gave him a peck on the cheek. He jumped about a mile and spun around.

Ginny laughed. "What's got your wand in a twist?"

"Sorry, you just surprised me."

"How? I called your name."

"Did you?"

"Yeah, I did. Are you ok? You seem a bit vague," Ginny stated, looking very concerned.

"I just really got into peeling the potatoes I guess," Harry grinned.

"Well, I'll leave you to your peeling, if that is what you're really doing to those poor innocent potatoes. I'll be in the shower if you need me, which you'd better not."

With that Ginny left Harry in the kitchen, and headed upstairs.

"Okay, Potter," Harry said to himself, "get yourself together, stop thinking about Tom. Ginny can't suspect that anything happened."

At this point, the annoying voice in the back of Harry's mind, which was starting to sound more and more like Tom, started singing 'I just can't get you of my head'.

"Crap! The broccoli," Harry cried.

Dinner was a quiet affair that night; Ginny was exhausted from training and Harry was still not sure how he felt about his jaunt into the diary. He started wondering frantically if he was going to get possessed like Ginny had been all those years ago.

His panic clearly showed as Ginny asked him not for the first time, "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghoul."

"It's nothing, I just found some stuff in the attic that brought back some unpleasant memories," Harry told his fiancée. Only it wasn't so unpleasant, said the little voice before adding, Tom can't possess you, he's only a figment of your imagination, a very handsome figment too.

Luckily Ginny cut his thoughts off the, "Is everything ready for tomorrow? What time are we going over to the Scamanders?"

"Do you mean for your surprise birthday party?"

"Of course."

"How did you-,"

"Luna."

"Makes sense. I thought we'd head over around seven, and Demelza wants to take you out to the new pub for a bit of a girls' catch-up beforehand."

"Aw, you're going to be so sad here alone while I'm out having fun," Ginny joked.

"Don't worry Ginny, there's a lot of ways a man can have a good time on his own."

"Not too good," Ginny said slyly. "When we get back from Luna's the real party is going to start."

"Well in that case, we should get some sleep tonight," he replied leaning in for a kiss.

As his lips met Ginny's he was suddenly looking at Tom, making him jerk back in horror.

He was brought back to his senses by Ginny's cackle. "Sorry, I didn't realise I offended you that much."

"It's not you, it was static. Gave me a shock," Harry invented, still shaken.

She frowned, "I didn't feel anything."


End file.
